When Earl Alden is found dead, dangling from a wind turbine, it's his wife, Missy, who is arrested. Unfortunately for Joe Pickett, Missy is his mother-in- law, a woman he dislikes heartily, and now he doesn't know what to do-especially when the early signs point to her being guilty as sin. But then things happen to make Joe wonder: Is Earl's death what it appears to be? Is Missy being set up? He has the county DA and sheriff on one side, his wife on the other, his estranged friend Nate on a lethal mission of his own, and some powerful interests breathing down his neck.

In Force of Nature, trouble comes calling from Nate’s past in the Special Forces, and the colleague he once called a friend won’t stop until those who know a deadly secret are silenced. Everyone close to Nate is at risk, including Joe and his family. To save them, Nate will have to convince law-abiding Joe to finally break a few rules along the way.

Nowhere to Run: A Joe Pickett Novel

Joe Pickett's in his last week as the temporary game warden in the town of Baggs, Wyoming, but there have been strange things going on in the mountains, and his conscience won't let him leave without checking them out: reports of camps looted, tents slashed, elk butchered. And then there's the runner who simply vanished one day. Joe doesn't mind admitting that the farther he rides, the more he wishes he could just turn around and go home.

Below Zero

New York Times best-selling author C. J. Box's Below Zero is the 10th novel featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett. The telephone calls from her stepdaughter April send chills down the spine of Joe's daughter Sherry. Wasn't April murdered six years ago in a bloody massacre? Wondering how this youthful caller knows details only April could know, Sherry becomes confused while Joe grows suspicious. Is the caller April - or are Joe and his family victims of a cruel hoax?

Breaking Point: A Joe Pickett Novel Book 13

The recipient of Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity Awards, New York Times best-selling author C. J. Box has won almost every honor in his field. In Breaking Point, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett is glad to catch up with old friend Lyle Pendergast, but then the man goes missing and is named a suspect in the death of two EPA employees. All signs point to Lyle’s guilt, but the more Joe digs into the case, the more he realizes he’s stepped into the middle of a deadly power play.

Blood Trail

Former game warden Pickett is now a special agent reporting directly to the governor. With someone targeting elk hunters, Pickett must head off a potentially deadly showdown when a flamboyant anti-hunting activist rolls in to town.

Free Fire

Best-selling author C. J. Box—an Anthony and Macavity Award winner—earned starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist for this exceptional mystery. Taking advantage of a legal loophole, a lawyer kills four people in Yellowstone National Park and walks away a free man. As the public outcry intensifies, the governor hires former game warden Joe Pickett to conduct a private investigation.

In Plain Sight: A Joe Pickett Novel

C. J. Box has won a host of awards, including the Anthony, Macavity, Gumshoe, and Barry. In Plain Sight sees game warden Joe Pickett's life take a turn for the worse after millionaire Opal Scarlett goes missing. As Pickett discovers more and more disturbing truths, it becomes clear that someone wants the dogged game warden to keep his nose out of the investigation.

Stone Cold: Joe Pickett, Book 14

Everything about the man is a mystery: the massive ranch in the remote Black Hills of Wyoming that nobody ever visits, the women who live with him, the secret philanthropies, the private airstrip, the sudden disappearances. And especially the persistent rumors that the man’s wealth comes from killing people. Joe Pickett, still officially a game warden but now mostly a troubleshooter for the governor, is assigned to find out what the truth is, but he discovers a lot more than he’d bargained for. There are two other men living up at that ranch. One is a stone-cold killer who takes an instant dislike to Joe.

Out of Range

C. J. Box's best-selling Joe Pickett novels have earned him a spot on every serious suspense fan's shortlist of favorites. The tightly constructed Out of Range brings game warden Joe to a new, remote beat in Wyoming's vast countryside to investigate the suspicious death of the previous warden.

Trophy Hunt: A Joe Pickett Novel

It's an idyllic late-summer day in Saddlestring, Wyoming, and game warden Joe Pickett is fly-fishing with his two daughters when he stumbles upon the mutilated body of a moose. Whatever - or whoever - attacked the animal was ruthless: half the animal's face has been sliced away, the skin peeled back from the flesh. Shaken by the sight, Joe starts to investigate what he hopes in an isolated incident.

Endangered

She was gone. Joe Pickett had good reason to dislike Dallas Cates, even if he was a rodeo champion, and now he has even more: Joe's 18-year-old ward, April, has run off with him. And then comes even worse news: The body of a girl has been found in a ditch along the highway - alive but just barely, the victim of blunt-force trauma.

Winterkill: Joe Pickett, Book 3

In the third adventure in C. J. Box’s engrossing series, Joe Pickett finds himself at the center of a confrontation between a special investigative team and a group of government-hating survivalists camped out on federal land. With the help of a mysterious stranger, Joe lays his life on the line to protect an innocent girl before a wave of violence surges over the Bighorn Mountains.

Back of Beyond

Cody Hoyt, while a brilliant cop, is an alcoholic struggling with two months of sobriety when his mentor and AA sponsor Hank Winters is found burned to death in a remote mountain cabin. At first it looks like the suicide of a man who’s fallen off the wagon, but Cody knows Hank better than that....

Savage Run: A Joe Pickett Novel

An Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, Gumshoe, and Barry Award winner, C. J. Box delivers the second pulse-pounding installment in his critically acclaimed series. While investigating a string of bizarre murders, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett is forced to flee across treacherous terrain with a deadly tracker on his trail.

The Highway

When teenagers Danielle and Gracie Sullivan take a clandestine car trip to visit their friend in Montana, little do they know it's the last time anyone will ever hear from them again. The girls and their car simply vanish. Cody Hoyt, who's just lost his job and has fallen off the wagon after a long stretch of sobriety, is in no condition to investigate. But his son Justin, who the girls were going to visit, and his former partner, Cassie Dewell, convince him to drive south to their last known location. As Cody makes his way to the remote stretch of Montana highway where the girls went missing, Cassie discovers that there have been scores of similar disappearances in the state.

Shots Fired: Stories from Joe Pickett Country

From C. J. Box, the New York Times-bestselling author of the Joe Pickett novels, comes a thrilling book of suspense stories about the Wyoming he knows so well - and the dark deeds and impulses that can be found there. Over the course of eighteen books, C. J. Box has been consistently hailed for his brilliant storytelling and extraordinary skills at creating character, suspense, and a deep sense of place. All of those strengths are in the ten riveting stories - three of them never before published - that make up Shots Fired.

Open Season: A Joe Pickett Novel

C.J. Box’s Open Season is a rare debut mystery that “immediately sets itself apart from the crowd” (Booklist). This thrilling novel stars Joe Pickett, a game warden in Wyoming who finds his life in danger after he looks into a murder investigation and discovers a conspiracy involving an oil pipeline and its threat to an endangered species.

Blue Heaven

A 12-year-old girl and her younger brother go on the run in the woods of northern Idaho, pursued by four men they have just watched commit murder - four men who know exactly who the children are, and where their desperate mother is waiting patiently by the phone for news of her children's fate.

Badlands

Twenty miles across the North Dakota border, where the scenery goes from rolling grass prairie to pipeline fields, detective Cassie Dewell has been assigned as the new deputy sheriff of Grimstad - a place people used to be from but were never headed to. Grimstad is now the oil capital of North Dakota. With oil comes money, with money comes drugs, and with drugs come the dirtiest criminals hustling to corner the market.

Dry Bones: A Walt Longmire Mystery

When Jen, the largest, most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever found, surfaces in Sherriff Walt Longmire's jurisdiction, it appears to be a windfall for the High Plains Dinosaur Museum - until Danny Lone Elk, the Cheyenne rancher on whose property the remains were discovered, turns up dead, floating face down in a turtle pond. With millions of dollars at stake, a number of groups step forward to claim her, including Danny's family, the tribe, and the federal government.

Iron Lake: Cork O'Connor, Book 1

Anthony Award-winning author William Kent Krueger crafts this riveting tale about a small Minnesota town’s ex-sheriff who is having trouble retiring his badge. Cork O’Connor loses his job after being blamed for a tragedy on the local Anishinaabe Indian reservation. But he must set aside his personal demons when a young boy goes missing on the same day a judge commits suicide—and no one but O’Connor suspects foul play.

Purgatory Ridge: A Cork O'Connor Mystery, Book 3

William Kent Krueger is the award-winning author of the popular Cork O’Connor mysteries. In Purgatory Ridge, Krueger crafts a riveting tale which has ex-sheriff O’Connor on the case after a heated town debate turns deadly. The local Anishinaabe Indian tribe is furious to discover that Karl Lindstrom’s lumber mill is after a grove of trees sacred to tribal lore. So when the mill gets bombed, killing a man, the tribe is blamed. But O’Connor has a different theory.

Blood Hollow

After 17-year-old Charlotte Kane, the beautiful, brilliant, and brooding daughter of a rich widower, disappears on a drunken New Years' Eve snowmobile ride, a raging blizzard soon snuffs out all search efforts. When her body is found during the spring thaw four months later, preliminary evidence implicates her ex-boyfriend: Ojibwe bad-boy Solemn Winter Moon. But then a second Charlotte Kane turns up dead, and Cork isn't sure of anything any more.

Boundary Waters

Drawing strong comparisons to the work of James Lee Burke and Tony Hillerman, William Kent Krueger’s Cork O’Connor mysteries never fail to please fans. Here Cork joins the search for a country-western singer who has disappeared in the wilderness along the American/Canadian border.

Audible Editor Reviews

C. J. Box's newest best seller, Cold Wind, marks his 11th visit to the popular Joe Pickett series. When we are first introduced to the world of Cold Wind it seems to be this wide expanse of big Wyoming emptiness. The events and characters look to be products of small town thinking and petty local politics. Yet you quickly learn that there's much more going on here. Wind turbines are coming to dominate the landscape and the economy. Unlikely new players are amassing huge fortunes and influence. Where you have money and power in play, you've got just the elements you need for conflict, mystery, and murder. It's against this backdrop that Joe Pickett works as a ranger. Ostensibly his job involves counting wildlife and keeping an eye on the local hunters, yet his role also allows him unique leeway to act both as the law  as well as outside the law.

David Chandler has now narrated 10 of the Joe Pickett books, so he's very familiar with the New West tone and feel for the series. He has a bit of challenge with the number of characters here, but Joe’s friend Nate stands out. Nate plays counterpoint to Joe  they're two sides of the same coin. Where Joe is the thoughtful family man, Nate is the badass wild card unfettered by society and living by his own moral code. You see this particularly in Chandler's voicing of the characters. Where Joe is the everyman voice of reason, Nate is the low menacing whisper of raw emotion and animal drives.

In many ways Cold Wind is reminiscent of an old established genre of storytelling that's populated Western literature for generations. It used to be the promise of the gold rush, then conflicts over cattle, then it was the oil boom; now the next big thing shaping the Western provinces is wind power. With Cold Wind, C. J. Box helps continue this proud American tradition of individualism and justice. Cleo Creech

Publisher's Summary

When Earl Alden is found dead, dangling from a wind turbine, it's his wife, Missy, who is arrested. Unfortunately for game warden Joe Pickett, Missy is his mother-in- law, a woman he dislikes heartily, and now he doesn't know what to do - especially when the early signs point to her being guilty as sin.

But then things happen to make Joe wonder: Is Earl's death what it appears to be? Is Missy being set up? He has the county DA and sheriff on one side, his wife on the other, his estranged friend Nate on a lethal mission of his own, and some powerful interests breathing down his neck. Whichever way this goes... it's not going to be good.

The action starts right from the beginning and the suspense is tight and keeps you glued to the audio long after you should be doing something else. Literally listened to this book every chance I got until it was finished and right to the end was captured by it. C.J. Box is a very talented writer and this latest installment in the Joe Pickett saga may be the best in the series, which says a lot since the series is so good. The narration is great, the story spellbinding I would recommend this book without a single reservation. Already looking forward to the next in the series.

We could always count on C.J. Box for great plots and his characters are unforgettable. Now, in COLD WIND, he also nails the nuanced ambiance of the real Wyoming, geographically and politically. As a native of that great state, I can't wait for his next offering.

the narrator was great I heard him on many books and he always does outstanding job. Joe Pickett books always start out so exciting the whole time I'm listen I can hardly wait for the finish this book lives up to its reputation I can hardly wait to listen to the next book.

Well all JP stories are great. Love nate of course. There is sort of a twist at the end of this but most of us who know this particular character will see part of the end coming. Just wish Joe would grow some balls with this character, have his handy dandy recorder turned on, and put the screws to this person once for frakking all. Tried to do this without spoiler.

Your report has been received. It will be reviewed by Audible and we will take appropriate action.

Can't wait to hear more from this listener?

You can now follow your favorite reviewers on Audible.

When you follow another listener, we'll highlight the books they review, and even email* you a copy of any new reviews they write. You can un-follow a listener at any time to stop receiving their updates.

* If you already opted out of emails from Audible you will still get review emails by the listeners you follow.